13J 
1581 


UC-NRLF 


EflS    532 


GIFT  OF 
Gladys  Isaacson 


FELLOWSHIP  BOOKS 


THE  QUEST  OF 
THE  IDEAL 


COPYRIGHT  1913 

BY  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  CO. 


THE  QUEST  OF 
THE  IDEAL 


GIFT  Off 
GLADYS     fSAACSON 


(•jhose  tnoiwdts  to  me  were 
W  tnee  it/ere  osiers  oowea. 


I.  THE  CHARM  OF  THE  WORD 

THE   word   "ideal"    is  still   beautiful, 
though  it  is  in  danger  of  being  hor- 
ribly misused.     It  will  be  a  pity  if  it 
is   cheapened   out  of   existence.     I   know   of 
none  that  can  take  its  place.     Its  roots  strike 
deep  into  the  past.     It  has  grown  up  like  a 
lily  from  an  immemorial  world.     It  is  one  of 
the  fairest  things  among  us  and  very  nearly 
the  most  valuable. 

<%  Perhaps  we  shall  appreciate  it  more  if  we 
call  up  some  of  its  companions,  if  we  can 
glance  backwards  at  its  origin;  but  it  is  no 
easy  matter  to  get  at  the  real  source.  When 
did  the  first  faint  conception  of  a  possible 
ideal  arise  in  any  mind?  .Can  any  one  sur- 
prise the  moment  of  the  capture  of  an  idea, 


' : ;  <?f;tbe  birth1  of  a  word:  what  is  a  thought  be- 
'  f6re:  if  ;iSl  thought? 

^  Phantoms  arise,  formless,  blown  like  smoke 
along  the  far  horizons  of  the  mind.  Day 
by  day,  night  after  night,  the  mind  pursues 
the  half-seen  chase;  a  shadowy  huntsman 
following  a  shadowy  stag  where  hunter 
and  hunted  and  forest  are  one.  At  last  one 
mind  more  powerful  than  the  rest,  sees 
more  clearly,  and  hunts  more  swiftly;  the 
idea  is  grasped,  a  name  is  fixed  upon  it,  and 
the  world  has  a  new  word  for  its  use;  the 
mind  of  the  world  is  the  wiser  by  a 
thought. 

^  Who  can  say  how  old  is  the  Greek  word 
c?8o>,  to  perceive,  to  know? 
^fe  Less  old  is  the  Greek  word  ffiea,  an  idea, 
form,  appearance;  which,  unlike  our  English 
equivalent,  may  mean  the  appearance  of  a 
thought  within  the  borders  of  the  mind,  or 
of  form  without;  "that  which  is  perceived," 
in  fact;  either  without  as  form,  or  within, 
as  thought.  It  is  well  to  keep  the  inter- 
changeable nature  of  both  these  appearances 
clearly  before  the  mind.  Thought  is  form  of 
a  kind.  Form  often  springs  from  thought. 
Here  we  begin  to  perceive  the  birth-right  of 
2 


the  strong  mind  upon  whose  movements  wait 
the  multiplicities  of  form. 
*fc  «8os  is  another  of  these  words,  not  very 
different  in  its  meaning  from  idea.  «8a>Aov  is 
likewise  a  kindred  word;  first  it  meant  a 
phantom;  an  appearance  which  had  no  real 
existence,  then  it  was  by  a  curious  twist  of 
the  mind  fastened  on  the  solid  reflection  of  a 
false  idea  of  the  divine  Spirit, — an  idol. 
<Sfc  These  are  fine  words ;  there  is  music  in  the 
sound  of  them,  the  music  of  the  Spring- 
time  of  the  mind.  They  have  the  sound  of 
breaking  chains,  of  the  bursting  of  the 
sheath.  From  them  we  learn  the  ages-old 
action  of  the  human  mind  at  its  greatest 
moments. 

tifc  It  was  probably  Plato  who  gave  us  our 
*     earliest  conception  of  the  ideal.     He  had  a 
*  notion   of   a   perfect   pattern   of   everything 
earthly  subsisting  somewhere  in  a  heavenly 
country.     He  first  put  in  words  what  we  all 
feel  and  know. 

Sfe  And  we  owe  him  a  debt;  and  we  owe  the 
poor  misused  word  a  debt.  For  the  belief 
in  a  fixed  good,  not  seen,  but  pictured  as  ex- 
isting across  the  borders  of  the  seen  and  con- 
trasting with  its  misery  or  futility  is  one  of 
3  « 


the  most  powerful  weapons  ever  put  into  the 
hand  of  man. 

II.  THE  PARADISAIC  DREAM 

§1  THE  ideal  first  sprang  into  life  from  the 
contact  with  pain  on  one  hand  and  beauty 
on  the  other;  with  one  added  ingredient 
which  I  shall  mention  later  on. 
fife  Did  some  fearful  pterodactyl,  flying 
against  the  sunset  in  the  effort  to  escape 
from  another  swifter  than  he,  dream  of  a 
warm  and  gorgeous  atmosphere  where  hor- 
rible combats  would  be  no  longer  a  necessity 
of  his  life?  Did  a  wounded  brontosaurus 
thundering  in  his  swamp,  dream,  as  he  lifted 
his  head  from  the  mud,  of  placid  lakes  where 
unharmed  he  might  trumpet  to  his  mate  and 
she  to  him?  Paradise  is  always  compounded 
of  the  finest  moments  of  life  as  it  is  known 
and  experienced  by  the  dreamer. 
fife  At  first,  while  man  was  in  his  wild  state, 
when  the  earth  was  untamed  and  the  other 
creatures  were  mightier  than  he,  his  life  was 
a  state  of  fear,  a  state  it  is  difficult  for  us  to 
have  any  conception  of.  The  rabbit  hunted 
by  the  weasel  knows  it;  so  does  the  small  bird 
under  the  shadow  of  the  hawk.  Out  of  this 


state  Man  had  to  rise  by  his  own  savage  effort. 
By  killing  and  slaying  and  mastering  the 
earth,  that  old  fierce  and  tormented  one  has 
gained  a  measure  of  peace  for  his  kind.  But 
it  is  along  this  fearful  path  men  have  come: 
the  dream  has  been  hard  to  rescue,  hard  to 
hold  by,  in  a  world  ruled  by  blood  and  lust 
and  fear. 

*%  Our  more  gentle  ideals  were  impossible  in 
that  old  world.  Men  fashioned  their  heav- 
ens out  of  the  best  moments  they  knew. 
Remember  those  Northern  warriors  who  lived 
by  slaughter,  who  came  out  of  their  frosty 
north,  terror  running  before  them,  and  blood 
behind.  Their  heaven  was  pictured  as  a  dark 
hall  where  they  might  sit  drinking  strong 
mead  from  the  skulls  of  their  enemies.  And 
yet  these  terrible  ones  were  the  sons  of  God 
as  well  as  we ;  they  knew  the  love  of  mate  and 
child;  they  felt  the  Breath  within  the  soul; 
they  lived  between  the  splendour  of  the  waves 
and  the  blue  tent  of  the  open  sky. 
%  The  Turkish  Heaven  is  not  a  much  better 
place,  less  fierce,  more  sensual:  set  the  para- 
dise of  the  cold  north  against  the  paradise  of 
the  warm  south;  the  enemy's  skull  against 
the  plump  houri,  and  choose  between  if  you 
5  *fc  can. 


can.  Better  than  either  appears  the  Indian's 
dream  of  the  wide  prairie  and  the  happy 
hunter.  All  the  primitive  heavens  are  built 
on  these  models.  The  paradise  of  the  prairie 
flower  would  be  the  silent  rolling  sea  of  flower 
and  leaf  with  neither  stamping  hoof  nor  rend- 
ing teeth  to  come  next  or  nigh.  The  paradise 
of  hoof  and  horn  would  be  the  wide  green 
world  vexed  neither  by  hunter  nor  beast  of 
prey.  The  paradise  of  the  hunter  includes 
the  travail  of  the  herd. 

III.  THE  RULER  OF  THE  DREAM 

<%  THE  dream  of  Paradise  was  begotten, 
was  it  not,  of  pain  on  the  one  hand  and  joy 
on  the  other.  But  there  was  a  third  greater 
contributing  cause,  one  that  is  an  eternal  puz- 
zle to  express;  it  is  at  once  the  oldest  thing 
in  life  and  the  most  elusive;  the  most  hack- 
neyed, the  least  understood ;  the  most  familiar, 
the  most  mysterious;  the  most  talked  about, 
the  least  regarded;  and  that  is  the  Source  of 
Inspiration,  the  Feeder  of  the  Soul.  None 
of  us,  not  the  deepest  spirited,  understand  it. 
No  one  can  explain  it,  though  temples  in- 
numerable have  been  built  to  house  it  and 
millions  of  men's  lives  have  been  spent  in 
6 


discoursing  of  it.  Still  the  mystery  hangs 
there,  our  chiefest  concern,  our  chiefest 
delight,  incomprehensible  always,  always 
adored. 

*fc  What  is  it,  whence  is  it,  this  wonder? 
How  many  names  have  been  given  to  it,  both 
on  this  star  and  on  many  another?  Om, 
Allah,  Zeus,  Spiritus  Sanctus,  The  First 
Cause,  The  Light  Eternal,  The  Word.  By 
this  and  many  and  other  strange  names  men 
have  tried  to  express  this  light  and  law: 
countless  millions  of  women  and  men  have  at- 
tempted to  explore  its  nature  and  faculties; 
they  have  tied  it  up  tight  in  creeds  and  books ; 
they  have  leaped  on  their  altars  and  cried  and 
cut  themselves,  ay  and  other  people  too,  with 
knives ;  and  the  mystery  still  hangs  there,  un- 
thinkable, not  to  be  imprisoned,  in  nature  and 
faculties  always  the  same. 
<%  Always  the  same:  the  same  as  it  broods 
over  the  plunging  of  the  fiery  gulfs  of  the  far 
suns ;  the  same  as  it  lights  the  staggering  beetle 
to  its  food  along  the  moss;  the  same  on  the 
waste  moor  and  in  the  crowded  church;  the 
same  upon  the  forehead  of  the  Saint  and  on 
this  earth  before  ever  a  man  was. 
*fc  It  was  the  dim  perception  of  the  presence 
7  S&of 


of  this  Spirit  that  began  to  enter  into  and 
colour  people's  notions  of  paradise.  It  must 
evidently  rule  there  since  the  earth  was  not 
without  it.  Those  who  understand  nature 
know  that  the  green  kingdoms  of  the  earth 
live  under  this  law:  that  the  footprints  of  the 
Unknowable  One  are  to  be  found  along  the 
fields  and  in  the  wood,  when  they  are  missed 
from  the  dwellings  of  men.  That  is  why  the 
shepherd  on  the  hills,  the  old  wife  at  her  cot- 
tage door,  the  negro  in  the  cotton  field,  some- 
times collect  a  pure  wisdom  more  valuable 
than  the  deliberate  intelligence  of  books. 
Sfe  Therefore  since  this  irrefutable  Law  reigns 
over  the  earth,  animating  the  least  vital,  and 
leaping  into  glory  in  the  most  splendid  mo- 
ments of  its  most  splendid  creatures,  how 
should  Paradise  be  without  that  sweetness, 
better  than  honey  to  the  simple  soul? 

IV.  THE  LABOURER 

*fc  THE  Idealist  stands  with  feet  planted  in 
the  original  clay  from  which  he  sprang. 
Above  him  is  his  dream.  In  his  heart  is  a 
desire  more  or  less  strong  to  bring  the  actual 
into  some  likeness  of  the  dream.  The  tool 
that  is  to  shape  out  in  this  intractable  earth 
8 


the  ideal  conscience  at  the  root  of  him  and 
thus  connect  the  two  is  nothing  but  his  will 
and  his  right  hand.  As  a  man  fashions  a  gar- 
den out  of  rough  ground,  so  must  the  idealist 
seize  upon  the  material  of  life  that  is  nearest 
to  him ;  so  that  at  long  last  his  eyes  may  look 
on  what  the  eyes  of  his  soul  have  beheld  from 
the  beginning.  This  is  creator's  work,  tre- 
mendous work,  for  the  raw  material  of  life  is 
stubborn  and  rude  and  hard ; — rude  and  hard 
enough  to  have  broken  many  and  many  a 
great  heart.  Magnificent  as  they  are,  the 
laws  that  bind  and  shape  this  raw  material  of 
life  are  rude  and  hard  also. 
.*fe  Which  of  us  that  has  eyes  to  see  and  the 
power  of  thought  but  has  staggered  at  that 
first  law  that  life  feeds  on  life?  So  terrible  is 
it  that  men  have  covered  it  up  and  cloaked  it, 
hiding  it  away  from  themselves  and  each 
other.  Not  one  in  a  hundred  dares  to  face  it; 
each  of  us  has  his  own  brightly  coloured 
screen,  painted  all  over  with  impossible  and 
beautiful  designs,  to  put  up  to  hide  the  truth. 
V&  The  true  idealist  is  he  who  does  not  fear 
the  truth,  who  takes  the  bitterest  truth  as  the 
salted  bread  between  his  teeth  and  gets  nour- 
ishment thereby. 

9  ^$s  How 


%  How  can  the  gardener  turn  the  waste  to 
blossom  unless  he  knows  of  the  frost  and  the 
tempest,  the  blight  and  the  worm? 
Sfc  So  must  the  idealist  ponder  well  the  whole 
picture  of  his  dream,  and  the  nature  of  his 
materials  before  he  can  get  to  work.  The 
more  widely  he  can  cast  his  thought,  the  more 
sane  and  firm  will  his  ideals  be.  The  more 
thorough  his  knowledge,  the  less  will  be  his 
fear  of  failure. 

<%  We  see  then  what  enormous  qualities  the 
quest  of  the  Ideal  demands  to-day; — a  purity 
and  a  devotion  to  the  dream  as  absolute  as 
that  of  the  heroes  of  the  San  Graal,  a  power 
of  clear  thought  that  shrinks  from  no  truth, 
that  seeks  everywhere  the  essences  of  things, 
that  examines  the  nature  and  properties  of 
those  appearances  that  make  up  his  surround- 
ings :  and  besides,  a  strong  right  hand  and  the 
will  to  labour  in  obedience  to  the  Law  that 
commands  the  creation  of  order  and  beauty. 

V.  THE  GARDEN 

*fe  I  HAD  almost  said  that  the  will  to  labour 
and  the  power  of  the  will,  were  the  best  quali- 
ties of  the  idealist;  forgetting  that  they  must 
always  come  second  to  the  imaginative  powers 
10 


of  the  soul.  But  even  in  this  kingdom  of  the 
soul  little  is  to  be  got  without  labour. 
*fc  Call  the  Soul  a  garden  as  they  do  on  the 
backs  of  the  prayer  books  and  then  look  how 
heavy  is  the  work.  There  is  the  soil  full  of 
ugly  primitive  worms  and  grubs  and  horned 
things  struggling  up  from  below.  How  must 
Will  the  Gardener  bend  and  stoop  and  hoe 
and  scratch  to  keep  under  these  primitive  ap- 
pearances! There  are  the  flowers,  the  lovely 
virtues,  all  in  rows,  shedding  a  sweet  savour; 
how  soon  they  wilt  and  wither  and  the  blos- 
soms fall;  what  great  knowledge  must  the 
Gardener  have  of  their  natures  and  how  un- 
tiringly must  he  tend  them.  There  are  the 
weeds  with  their  inevitable  secret  growth; 
God  knows  how  a  whole  crop  may  spring  up 
in  the  heart  of  a  morning.  There  is  the  rain; 
alas  for  our  tears,  but  alas  for  the  dry  heart 
that  has  never  known  a  sorrow.  There  is  the 
awful  mystery  of  the  recurring  visits  of  the 
sunlight: — the  flowers  stretching  towards  it 
through  the  night  and  spreading  their  cups 
in  the  morning.  Without  it  they  are  not,  be- 
cause of  it  they  are.  How  did  the  bud  know 
as  it  slept  through  the  darkness  that  in  the 
morning  it  would  be  blest? 


fife  When  the  mysterious  sunlight  and  the  good 
soil  and  the  hand  of  the  Gardener  have  done 
their  work  and  rendered  fruitful  the  garden 
of  the  Soul, — why  then  the  work  of  the  ideal- 
ist is  only  beginning. 

fife  As  the  engraver  cuts  the  well  imagined  pic- 
ture into  steel  or  copper,  so  must  the  idealist 
reproduce  in  the  clay  on  which  he  stands, — 
in  stones  and  mortar  and  flesh  and  blood,  the 
features  of  his  dream. 


YI.  ON  THE  MANIPULATING  OF 
MATTER  BY  SPIRIT 

fife  THERE  is  a  relation  between  the  para- 
disaic dream  and  the  crude  terrors  of  the  ma- 
terial life;  the  link  is  the  desire  of  the  human 
creature  to  realise  the  dream  within  the  limits 
of  his  material  conditioning.  The  happy 
man  is  he  who  is  able  to  shape  out  a  course 
for  his  thought  and  actions  which  is  fitted  to 
bring  about  an  agreement  between  Heaven 
and  earth, — fitted  to  induce  the  dream  to.  take 
up  its  abode  within  the  bondage  of  matter. 
fife  The  unhappy  man  is  he  who  fails; — per- 
haps through  some  lack  of  judgment  or  fac- 
ulty or  pure  strength.  A  greater  than  Sam- 
12 


son  is  wanted  for  this  fight,  in  which  God 
Himself  is  so  often  worsted. 
*fe  For  if  there  is  one  thing  but  too  patent, 
it  is  that  matter  is  capable  of  choking  spirit; 
that  Spirit  has  an  almost  insuperable  difficulty 
in  controlling  matter.  With  her  soft  breath 
and  tenuous  hands  the  soul  labours  at  her 
tremendous  task  of  creating  order  and  beauty 
out  of  chaos:  often,  too  often  the  breath  is 
sighed  away,  and  hardly  a  line  or  mark  is  left 
to  tell  she  has  been  there.  For  long  enough 
spirit  has  been  struggling  in  the  grip  of  mat- 
ter; here  and  there  emerging  in  a  great  and 
noble  intelligence,  continually  thrust  back  and 
held  down. 

%  How  much  spirit  was  there  in  the  matter 
of  the  plecthyosaurus  as  he  crawled  on  to  the 
mud  bank  to  lie  in  the  sun?  Consider  the 
patience  of  the  Mighty  One  who  presided  at 
his  birth.  What  of  the  infant  born  yesterday 
into  a  slum  to  which  the  mud  of  the  reptile  is 
a  garden — born  to  a  stricken  mother  and  a 
hypothetical  father ;  no  room  indeed  for  it  and 
no  such  gentle  receptacle  as  a  manger;  an  old 
black  cloth  for  all  its  swaddling  clothes. 
Consider  the  patience  of  the  Mighty  One  who 
presides  at  that  birth  also!  How  much 
13  ^s  chance 


chance  has  that  small  being  of  conquering  the 
varieties  of  matter  by  which  it  is  surrounded, 
and  of  emerging  into  an  ideal  world? 
Sfe  There  is  infinite  value  in  such  spectacles 
for  us;  no  true  thing  is  ever  shirked  or  put 
away  in  the  dark  that  does  not  breed  a  rotten 
spot  in  thought  and  a  corresponding  feeble- 
ness of  life. 

%  If  spirit  is  here  overwhelmed,  and  the 
idealists  are  the  soldiers  of  the  Spirit,  the 
more  need  for  their  swords. 
<%  If  once  the  doctrine  of  an  Omnipotence 
that  could  shape  matter  and  life  at  will,  and 
does  not,  were  overthrown,  how  freely  might 
you  breathe  I  How  freely  act!  We  have 
done  with  the  idea  of  an  Omnipotent  who 
might  and  could  help  and  cure  but  will  not. 
No  more  can  the  unhappy  curse  God  and  die. 
The  responsibility  is  now  transferred. 
Sfc  We  the  ungrateful  ones!  We  the  sinners! 
We  the  blind!  We  the  deaf  who  have 
stopped  our  ears  to  the  music  of  the  heavenly 
command  that  bids  us  live  for  Service!  We 
the  cold  hearted  that  leave  the  Blessed  One 
to  suffer  and  die  afresh  each  day  in  our  hid- 
eous streets  and  lanes! 
<%  Gone  the  Hebrew  ideal  of  the  Angry  Je- 

14 


hovah  fighting  and  smiting  and  breaking  his 
enemy's  teeth  at  random! 
^fe  Gone  the  mediaeval  Almighty,  with  his 
inscrutable  code  of  morals,  afflicting  the  inno- 
cent with  misery,  pains,  and  diseases,  and  for 
their  good! 

fife  The  problems  solved  that  gave  many  of 
us  a  wet  pillow  before  morning! 
fife  All  the  world  as  a  field  of  action  when 
each  man  and  woman  and  child  stands  forth 
as  a  helper  in  the  new  old  crusade! 
fife  Consider  then  how  bright  a  responsibility 
falls  into  the  hand  of  man. 
fife  Loud  and  very  loud  the  voice  of  the  Beau- 
tiful One  has  been  preaching  in  our  ears; 
only  a  few  of  us  have  moved  at  all  in  answer. 
With  many-coloured  and  many-shaped  beau- 
ties He  drapes  every  foot  of  earth,  every  hedge 
and  ditch  side.  We  answer  by  defiling  His 
earth  with  hideous  erections  and  stupid  un- 
cleanness.  He  allows  every  one  of  us  a  share 
in  His  own  creator  spirit  and  many  of  us  an- 
swer by  creating  vileness. 
fife  Think  of  the  joy  of  heart  of  each  child 
born  into  the  splendour  of  the  new  ideal. 
Every  one  with  the  love  of  the  Unseeable  One 
in  his  heart,  every  one  with  the  love  of  his 
15  <%  fellow 


fellow  men,  every  one  with  a  sword  of  light 
in  his  hand  to  liberate  the  Good  Spirit  of 
order  and  grace,  to  work  in  the  service  of  this 
Spirit  till  the  earth  blooms  as  a  garden. 
fife  Even  now  any  one  can  see  how  fast  is  the 
advance;  it  is  certain  that  we  are  growing 
daily  more  powerful  in  dealing  with  matter. 
The  angels  of  life  have  now  at  their  disposal 
an  electric  current  that  thrills  round  the 
Earth.  When  this  weapon  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  great  ones  great  things  will  come  into  be- 
ing. 

fife  Great  things  are  being  done  to-day.  I 
have  seen  a  clear  spirit,  grown  powerful,  shin- 
ing like  a  sun,  smoothing  out  the  most  diffi- 
cult life,  bringing  marvels  to  light  about  it;— 
shape  after  shape  of  beauty  rising  up  around 
it  in  ever  increasing  circles  that  grew  finally 
world-wide. 

^s  It  seems  as  though  no  limit  could  be  set 
to  the  operations  in  matter  of  the  powerful 
soul. 


VII.  CONDUCTORS  OF  THE  IDEAL 

"K  ALL  the  lovers  of  heavenly  things  know 
that  there   is   a  moment  when   illumination 
16 


comes  as  suddenly,  passing  as  quickly  as  a 
bird  that  crosses  the  sky.  There  is  no  question 
but  that  these  moments  of  inspiration  are,  to 
those  who  have  known  them,  the  greatest  good 
in  life.  They  bring  ecstasy,  which  means 
simply  a  getting  out  of  the  body. 
ffe  Any  one  who  has  felt  this  ecstasy  in  either 
a  greater  or  a  lesser  degree  must  desire  to  ex- 
perience it  again;  for  this  reason  all  the  ave- 
nues to  the  ideal  are  explored. 
fife  Which  are  these  avenues?  Music  is  one. 
Painting  another.  Poetry.  Wine  perhaps? 
Or  a  fine  day.  Or  a  child's  face.  Boehme 
found  his  vision  of  heaven  in  a  pewter  plate. 
"Sitting  one  day  in  his  room  his  eye"  (Boehme 
the  shoemaker's)  "fell  on  a  burnished  pewter 
dish  which  reflected  the  sunshine  with  such 
marvellous  splendour,  that  he  fell  into  an  in- 
ward ecstasy  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  he 
could  now  look  into  the  principles  and  deepest 
foundations  of  things.  He  believed  that  it 
was  only  a  fancy  and  in  order  to  banish  it 
from  his  mind  went  out  upon  the  green.  But 
here  he  remarked  that  he  gazed  into  the  very 
heart  of  things,  the  very  herbs  and  grass,  and 
that  actual  nature  harmonised  with  what  he 
had  inwardly  seen.  He  said  nothing  about 
17  fife  this 


this  to  any  one,  but  praised  and  thanked  God 
in  silence." 

fife  We  cannot  all  have  the  insight  of  a 
Boehme,  and  see  Paradise  in  a  pewter  plate; 
but  we  all  of  us  can  know  ecstasy,  even  heav- 
enly ecstasy  and  many  and  many  are  the  roads 
by  which  we  see  it.  For  pure  ecstasy  brings 
wisdom,  knowledge  and  peace. 
fife  Men  have  built  churches  in  order  to  cap- 
ture this  ideal  vision;  all  the  resources  of 
architecture,  colour,  light,  sound  and  even 
perfume  have  been  ransacked  to  this  end. 
Along  these  many  paths  all  converging  to  one 
point  the  vision  comes  to  many. 
fife  Others  find  that  the  divine  voice  is  silent 
for  them  in  the  midst  of  so  much  human  art 
and  artifice.  They  leave  the  church  with  its 
linking  arches  and  painted  shadows,  its  in- 
cense and  singing  of  boys  and  strive  to  make 
their  souls  in  night  and  darkness,  on  the  hill- 
side, by  the  sea,  or  in  the  still  room.  Others 
again  seek  this  light  in  the  eyes  of  their  fellow 
men;  in  the  hearts  and  the  lives  and  the  in- 
tellects of  men  they  find  the  highest  expression 
of  all  forms  of  life;  and  in  the  service  of  the 
ideal  in  mankind  they  lose  and  find  them- 
selves. 
18 


fife  Some  seek  the  vision  of  the  Graal  by  the 
road  of  the  cultivation  of  the  inner  self ;  every- 
thing goes  down  before  that  tremendous  pre- 
occupation— homely  life  and  love  and  simple 
ways,  all  appetite,  joys  of  the  senses,  claims  of 
their  fellow  men:  nothing  matters  to  them 
but  the  call  that  resounds  through  the  emptied 
spaces  of  their  souls. 

fife  Set  against  these  the  men  who  search  for 
the  ideal  by  the  road  of  the  senses.  There  is 
many  a  cruel  lover  who  tests  and  tries  and 
flings  away  hearts  who  in  some  dim  blind  way 
is  searching  for  the  one  pure  gem  that  he  has 
figured  to  himself  in  his  dreams.  There  are 
some  who  even  in  their  lust  are  seekers; 
strange  and  contradictory  as  that  may  seem. 
fife  There  is  another  sort  still  who  have  been 
in  love  with  an  imagined  beauty  and  break 
their  hearts  because  the  primitive  laws  of  life 
are  so  fierce,  so  much  at  war  with  the  features 
of  their  dream.  These  are  the  people  of  large 
hearts,  brains  and  appetites  who  are  strong 
enough  to  shake  off  traditions  of  thought, 
keen  enough  to  see  the  limitations  of  reality, 
not  strong  enough  of  will  and  not  wise  enough 
to  devise  a  means  of  bringing  the  two,  the 
ideal  thought  and  the  obstinate  material  of 
19  «fc  life, 


life,  into  harmony.  These  are  the  sort  who 
are  always  hoping  for  an  imagined  good  by 
the  road  of  excess ;  who  fly  to  the  never  ending 
and  quite  certain  consolation  of  satisfying 
their  appetites;  certain  at  least  as  long  as  their 
appetites  last.  How  many  of  this  sort  have 
not  used  whisky  as  a  refuge  from  thought? 
That  drunken  woman  with  her  hat  on  one  side, 
that  man  rolling  home  and  singing  as  he  goes, 
they  may  be  idealists  at  heart;  neither  you  nor 
I  can  tell. 

^s  It  is  a  wise  man  that  can  say  where  appe- 
tite ends  and  the  search  for  the  ideal  begins. 
The  fact  is,  there  is  no  division.  Nose, 
tongue,  hand,  eye  and  ear;  ay  and  the  whole 
body;  such  are  the  roads  by  which  the  divine 
comes  to  man.  There  is  no  getting  out  of  the 
body — for  long,  at  least.  The  more  necessary 
that  it  should  be  clean:  that  a  seal  should  be 
set  upon  each  gateway,  that  the  Blessed  One 
may  not  falter  at  any  entrance,  nor  be  turned 
away  at  the  doors. 

VIII.  THE  BASIS  OF  THE  IDEAL 
A  Chapter  not  to  be  read  in  a  drawing-room 
^  CAN  it  be  that  the  mediaeval  hell  was  a 
more  philosophic   idea   than   it  has   of  late 
20 


gained  credit  for?  It  seems  to  have  ex- 
pressed something  that  we  try  to  leave  out; 
it  expressed  the  terror  of  life,  the  central  fires, 
the  split  lightning  in  the  hand  of  Jove. 
%  We  live  a  strange  life  nowadays;  we  are 
huddled  together  in  our  massed  cities,  pro- 
tected from  Nature's  boldness  by  our  clever 
inventions ;  so  it  comes  that  we  are  apt  to  for- 
get the  hole  of  the  pit  whence  we  are  digged. 
We  like  to  think  of  Nature  and  the  God  in 
Nature  as  something  pitiful,  gentle  and  se- 
rene as  a  good  woman  ordering  her  house. 
But  the  laws  of  Nature  are  not  so;  it  is  right 
that  we  should  know  it. 
%  It  is  good  for  us  sometimes  to  detach  our- 
selves from  the  every-day  conditions  of  our 
daily  life,  to  look  down  into  the  roots  and 
foundations  of  our  being  and  our  thoughts. 
A  down  pillow  and  a  screen — is  that  what 
we  are  wanting;  or  is  it  a  glimpse  of  the 
truth;  sweet  or  bitter,  what  matter  so  it  be 
the  truth?  It  is  good  for  us  to  have  all  our 
down  pillows  snatched  away  and  to  be  forced 
from  a  warm  fireside  out  into  the  open  air, 
even  if  it  is  to  face  the  rain  and  the  storm. 
Sfc  The  divine  Beatrice  went  down  into  hell ; 
so  should  we  all  for  a  season,  for  heaven  rests 
21  ^3  upon 


upon  hell  of  a  sort.  Our  very  peace  and  our 
ideals  depend  upon  the  balance  of  turbulent 
forces.  The  sunlight  by  which  we  live  is  an 
emanation  from  an  appalling  and  unthinkable 
chaos  of  flame. 

Sfe  When  we  look  at  the  welter  out  of  which 
we  have  risen,  we  see  man  then  for  what  he 
is,  the  most  cruel,  lustful  and  bloody  of  all 
the  beasts;  and  wonder  of  wonders  the  most 
godlike  too. 

%  Many  men  and  most  women  would  rather 
not  look  on  these  things  at  all.  Their  creed 
is  that  the  evil  that  is  not  spoken  of,  is  not 
there.  They  will  sin  as  it  were  behind  the 
hand.  The  good  women  who  do  not  sin,  pre- 
tend they  know  nothing.  They  have  even 
elevated  their  determined  ignorance  into  a 
virtue. 

%  To  these  good  women  one  might  say  that 
Beatrice  still  shone  in  hell,  that  she  emerged 
thence  more  lovely  and  more  wise.  A  fig  for 
drawing-room  pretences.  It  is  as  though  our 
city  fathers  were  too  pure-minded  to  look  into 
the  city  sewers;  and  the  consequences,  moral 
and  physical,  might  make  a  match  of  it.  No ; 
we  cannot  be  wise  unless  we  look  at  life  as  a 
whole.  The  more  the  boundaries  of  our  con- 
22 


sciousness  are  enlarged,  the  saner  becomes  our 
attitude  towards  life ;  the  more  wisely  we  shall 
deal  with  the  seething  of  the  life  force  that 
goes  on  at  our  doors,  and  within  them. 
*fc  All  this  our  modern  existence  tends  to  sup- 
press. How  many  a  hot  young  man  has  been 
driven  from  his  home  by  the  too  much  bread 
and  milk,  by  the  ignoring  of  the  world,  the 
flesh  and  the  devil  whose  voices  are  roaring 
in  his  ears. 

*fe  As  four  walls  and  a  lighted  hearth  will 
shut  out  night,  storm  and  cold,  so  does  our 
soft  primness  seek  to  cover  away  the  turbu- 
lence of  life. 

%  Revolt,  rage,  lust,  fear  and  pain,  they  are 
all  there;  the  counterparts  in  the  soul  of  the 
grim  forces  of  the  universe.  Governed  and 
ordered,  they  become  strength,  energy,  agility, 
rapidity,  beauty;  and  at  the  last,  peace. 
%  We  are  the  children  of  mystery,  born  of 
the  mud  and  the  fiery  sun.  There  is  no  peace 
for  us  save  the  peace  of  balanced  forces. 
%  It  is  difficult  to  express  exactly  what  I 
mean.  What  could  be  more  peaceful  than  a 
summer  evening  of  sunshine?  Yet  look  what 
enormities  of  force  and  fire  and  headlong  mo- 
tion have  brought  it  about. 

23  ^3  What 


•fc  What  could  be  quieter  than  the  peace  of 
a  saintly  face?  But  that  too  is  builded  upon 
central  fires.  What  you  see  there  is  the 
chained  energy  of  potential  outbreakings  and 
storms;  that  peace  is  the  more  lucent  because 
of  the  primal  force  on  which  it  rests. 
*fc  The  great  man  is  he  whose  passions  have 
learned  to  sit  as  quiet  as  the  eagle  at  the  feet 
of  Jove.  The  ruling  woman  is  she  who  guides 
the  men  of  her  house  by  scarcely  perceptible 
motions.  Knowing  the  power  of  the  forces 
of  life,  having  governed  her  own  soul,  she 
governs  others  by  a  smile. 

IX.  ON  CONSCIENCE 

Sfc  THE  question  of  conscience  is  curiously 
related  to  the  ideal.  What  is  it,  this  thing 
we  call  conscience?  What  is  it  that  smites 
us  this  hard  blow  when  we  have  been  false  to 
our  own  code  of  right?  Watch  your  sensa- 
tions when  you  have  done  or  said  an  unwise, 
even  ever  so  slightly  cruel  thing:  tell  me  then 
if  something  does  not  strike  a  blow  at  your 
heart,  sickening  you,  half-stopping  your 
breath,  punishing  you  till  you  have  repented 
and  made  good  your  fault.  Who  is  it  strikes 
the  blow?  Who  is  it  holds  the  whip? 
24 


*fc  Children  suffer  under  the  strokes  of  this 
tormentor.  I  remember  a  kind  father  forgiv- 
ing a  troublesome  little  chap  of  three.  He 
patted  his  back  and  said,  "There  now,  you 
will  be  father's  good  little  boy?"  "No,  no," 
said  the  child,  bursting  into  a  passion  of  tears, 
and  throwing  himself  into  his  father's  arms: 
"No,  no!  It's  dada's  naughty,  wicked  little 
boy."  This  thing  of  three  had  already  his 
own  private  ideals  and  wept  to  find  himself 
falling  short. 

*fc  The  interesting  fact  is  that  the  bold  fellow 
who  drives  you  with  his  whip  is  just  as  fal- 
lible as  can  be :  he  is  always  making  mistakes ; 
often  he  lets  you  off  when  you  have  been  do- 
ing what  other  people  can  see  is  wrong:  all 
the  while  you  and  your  foolish  conscience 
have  been  as  happy  as  possible  together.  Not 
only  is  he  a  stupid  fellow,  requiring  to  be 
educated,  but  he  is  also  a  very  simple  fellow; 
you  yourself  can  pet  and  handle  and  delude 
him ;  put  him  and  his  whip  to  sleep  with  false 
promises,  bad  reasoning,  and  other  narcotics. 
There  he  will  lie  and  drowse  and  sicken  and 
give  you  scarcely  any  trouble  unless  fear  comes 
to  wake  him. 

*fc  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  known  good 
25  %  people, 


people,  the  saints  of  the  earth,  cherishing  a 
great  bloated  overgrown  conscience.  This 
monster  has  ruled  their  every  moment  with 
a  rod  of  iron;  reduced  them  to  a  diet  of  bread 
and  fruit,  and  forced  them  little  by  little  into 
an  active  and  suffering  sainthood. 
Sfe  That  is  what  a  pampered  conscience  does. 
It  becomes  a  clumsy  monster  who  will  know 
no  bounds  and  no  excuses.  It  will  work  you 
like  the  stoker  of  an  engine.  It  will  strip  you 
of  your  fine  linen  and  your  outer  garment,  and 
drive  you  at  last  upon  the  arms  of  a  cross. 
fife  And  after  all,  why  not?  Better  any  an- 
guish than  the  slow  suffocation  of  ease. 

X.  THE  WEAPONS  OF  IDEALISM 

<fc  THE  Real  and  the  Ideal!  What  harm 
has  been  done  by  this  senseless  antithesis! 
The  Ideal  is  by  far  the  realest  thing  on  earth, 
as  political  economists  and  statesmen  are  be- 
ginning to  find  out  through  their  mistakes. 
fife  All  the  people  who  live  for  noble  ends,  the 
great  people  of  the  earth,  are  idealists.  It  is 
they  who  have  the  gift  to  divine  the  uses  and 
properties  of  matter,  who  see  through  it  and 
beyond  it  and  all  around  it  by  means  of  its 
properties,  and  control  it  to  great  ends. 
26 


%  Give  stones  and  mortar  to  an  idealist  who 
has  had  the  force  and  will  to  learn  their  uses 
and  the  control  of  them  and  he  will  build  you 
a  cathedral.  His  idealism  will  give  the  mere 
rough  material  of  his  trade  a  value  which  is 
not  to  be  measured.  Give  the  same  material 
to  the  cunning  man  of  small  brain,  to  the 
man  who  is  called  the  practical  man,  and  he 
will  build  you  a  hideous  street,  cheating  as 
he  goes,  in  which  his  lack  of  real  practical 
sense  is  manifest,  because,  in  flat  disobedience 
to  the  commands  of  his  Creator,  he  is  creating 
an  unremunerative  ugliness,  when  remunera- 
tive beauty  might  have  better  rewarded  him. 
Bricks  and  stones  have  often  been  the  weapons 
of  the  idealist,  and  will  be  so  once  more  in  the 
future. 

<%  Colour  and  line  are  other  ideal  weapons. 
Give  a  blank  wall  to  one  who  has  had  force 
of  will  to  learn  the  control  and  the  use  of 
colour  and  he  will  present  you  with  the  glories 
of  the  imagination.  The  human  creature  who 
is  all  appetite  and  no  imagination  will  deco- 
rate it  for  you  with  foul  words ;  which  wall  of 
the  two  will  have  the  most  real  existence,  that 
adorned  with  the  ejaculations  of  appetite  or 
that  which  speaks  the  language  of  the  soul? 
27  %  They 


They  are  both  real;  as  the  thrush  and  the 
woodlouse  may  haunt  the  same  tree;  and  by 
that  I  mean  no  disrespect  to  the  woodlouse, 
who  is  a  clever  enough  little  beast  in  his  way, 
as  you  will  soon  see  if  you  tickle  him  with  a 
straw. 

<%  Science  is  one  of  the  strongest  weapons  of 
the  idealist.  All  the  greatest  scientists  have 
been  and  are  idealists;  they  have  great  and 
clear  imaginations  that  can  leap  at  the  living 
principle  behind  appearances,  and  work  upon 
that.  Galileo  was  not  the  only  one  of  them 
who  lived  and  died  for  an  ideal.  What  saint, 
what  poet  has  ever  had  a  greater  imagination 
than  Tyndall?  Was  ever  truth  more  nobly 
expressed  than  by  him?  With  a  little  gas  and 
a  few  yards  of  tubing,  his  singing  flame  will 
tell  you  some  of  the  deepest  secrets  of  the 
universe.  And  there  are  one  or  two  of  his 
sort  alive  to-day. 

*fc  These  are  only  a  few  of  the  weapons  of 
idealism;  there  are  a  thousand  others.  I 
should  weary  of  cataloguing  them.  Smiles, 
tears,  laughter,  good  cookery,  humour,  cold 
water,  sunlight,  common  sense,  yes,  and  car- 
bolic. On  the  subduing  weapon  of  love  I 
cannot  even  touch,  so  mighty  a  mystery  is  it, 
28 


as  broad  and  deep  as  the  ocean  and  much  more 
incomprehensible.  I  will  only  mention  one 
more,  one  whose  power  and  importance  war- 
rants me  in  dealing  with  it  separately. 

XL  MONEY 

*fc  MONEY  is  one  of  the  chief  weapons  of 
idealism.  The  Latin  authors  said  that  the 
Druids  sold  places  in  the  other  world  in  return 
for  money.  That  is  a  very  suggestive  bit  of 
scandal.  Possibly  it  is  partly  true;  after  all 
why  should  not  one  visit  the  nearest  apparent 
Guardians  of  Paradise  with  treasure? 
<%  Money  in  those  far-away  times  was  a  much 
purer  and  simpler  thing  than  it  is  to-day.  It 
was  a  symbol  of  labour;  whether  the  hard 
labour  of  fighting  or  the  quieter  labour  of  the 
fields  or  the  highly-prized  labour  of  the  smith, 
the  artist  in  metals  or  in  embroidered  clothing. 
<%  Those  who  sacrificed  the  fruit  of  such 
effort  in  symbol  at  the  doors  of  the  unknown 
were  by  no  means  fools  of  their  own  inven- 
tion. All  true  labourers  do,  in  one  way  or 
another,  so  offer  their  labours;  why,  the  very 
rascals  of  commerce  who  have  shorn  their 
brothers  and  sisters  as  close  as  a  June  flock  in 
spite  of  helpless  baaings— when  they  have 
29  <%  heaped 


heaped  up  their  pile  of  fleeces  as  high  as  the 
stars,  so  that  all  men  gape  upon  it  with  open 
mouths,  are  they  not  constrained  to  make  an 
offering  to  the  ideal  which  in  spite  of  them 
lurks  in  the  background  of  their  thought? 
These  offerings  may  take  the  shape  of  hospital 
wards,  churches,  gold  jugs  and  basins  pre- 
sented for  the  Almighty's  use,  parks,  libraries 
and  other  public  institutions. 
*fc  In  so  far  as  such  things  are  precipitations 
of  personal  vanity  they  are  simply  curious. 
Probably  there  is  mixed  up  with  this  motive 
a  concession  to  their  own  still  surviving  sense 
of  the  best;  and  also  a  concession  to  other 
people's  ideals,  for  which  they  still  have  a 
respect  which  is  almost  fear, 
"fc  Now  arises  the  question:  can  a  gift  of 
tainted  money  brought  by  impure  hands  turn 
to  good?  The  more  one  puzzles  over  this 
question,  the  more  complex  and  difficult  it 
appears.  Money  is  certainly  an  impersonal 
thing:  if  you  or  I  steal  a  sixpence  that  six- 
pence is  just  the  same  as  any  other,  yet  should 
we  expect  what  is  called  "a  blessing"  with  it? 
Yet  it  would  be  quite  a  healthy  sixpence  if 
passed  on  to  any  one  else. 
*fc  Perhaps  tainted  money  in  impure  hands 
30 


never  can  quite  be  a  sword  of  light.  Some 
unsavoury  flavour  will  hang  about  the  jug 
and  basin,  the  park,  the  library  or  the  statue 
and  what  not :  there  will  be  something  in  the 
mode  of  giving,  some  lack  of  a  true  equation 
between  the  thing  given  and  those  to  whom 
it  is  given,  or  else  a  fault  in  the  manner  of 
giving,  that  will  stamp  the  gift  and  keep  it 
from  thriving. 

<8fe  On  the  other  hand,  I  do  believe  that  tainted 
money  in  pure  and  innocent  hands  used  for 
ideal  ends  can  become  extraordinarily  power- 
ful. Remember  that  all  money  is  a  symbol  of 
effort  or  labour  of  some  kind;  any  creature 
who  has  money  is  as  if  it  were  possessed  of  a 
little  army  of  goblin  hands  which  can  be  set 
to  work  both  fast  and  well  on  any  task  their 
master  chooses ; — to  work  with  a  goblin  clev- 
erness too,  far  in  excess  of  any  qualities  owned 
by  their  master. 

§1  He  or  she  who  has  money  then  is  possessed 
of  a  talisman  as  powerful  as  the  ring  or  the 
lamp  of  the  Arabian  Nights'  tale;  with  this 
difference,  that  the  talisman  is  a  more  delicate 
one  than  is  told  of  in  any  marvellous  tale. 
9k  This  is  its  virtue;  when  held  in  the  hand 
of  the  owner  it  takes  the  colour  of  the  heart; 
31  «feit 


it  turns  to  a  poisonous  mass,  exhaling  an  evil 
odour,  in  the  hand  of  the  vicious ;  it  turns  to 
trash  in  the  hand  of  the  fool ;  it  shines  a  long- 
rayed  star  of  powerful  emanations  in  the  hand 
of  him  who  loves  his  fellow-men. 


XII.  SHADOW  AND  SUBSTANCE 

Sfe  ONE  day  I  happened  to  find  myself  among 
a  little  group  of  people  on  a  winter  afternoon. 
The  talk  ran  presently  on  a  woman  known  to 
us  all,  whose  husband  was  openly  and  repeat- 
edly unfaithful  and  quite  indifferent  to  her; 
yet  the  woman  still  clung  to  her  uncomfortable 
position  as  his  wife.  "It  is  extraordinary/' 
said  one  of  the  party,  "how  a  woman  of  her 
intelligence  can  be  contented  to  take  the 
shadow  and  leave  the  substance." 
9k  I  felt  curious  at  once  to  see  how  such  a 
remark  would  be  taken;  glancing  round,  at 
each  face  in  turn,  I  saw  that  no  one  had  mis- 
understood. There  was  neither  hesitation  nor 
questioning  on  any  face. 
*%  Here  was  an  extraordinary  thing;  such  a 
paradox  to  be  taken  as  a  commonplace  among 
people  who  made  no  parade  of  religion  or 
higher  thought! 
32 


fifc  What  was  the  interpretation  of  that  re- 
mark? 

Sfc  That  love  is  substance ;  that  such  things  as 
income,  houses,  silver  forks  and  motor  cars 
may  be  shadows:  real  enough  if  they  stand 
for  the  real  things,  otherwise  valueless. 
<fc  That  is  to  say  that  the  spiritual  is  the  one 
reality,  the  material  is  the  reflection. 
fifc  And  to  say  that  people  accept  such  a  wild 
notion  for  a  rule  of  life! 
fife  How  many  of  us  look  at  solid  things  as 
shadows  and  seek  for  the  spirit  of  which  they 
are  the  projections?     How  many  of  us  know 
only  those  solid  shadows,  those  affluent  pro- 
jections? 

<%  How  many  of  us  but  would  hurry  to  the 
potter's  field  and  pick  up  those  thirty  pieces 
of  silver  to  put  them  in  the  bank? 

Pecunia  non  olet;  "Money  has  no  smell." 
Is  not  that  a  respectable  doctrine?  And  how 
many  subscribe  to  it? 

"fife  On  the  other  hand  there  are  very  many 
people  who  hold  half  unconsciously  the  other 
faith,  wild  and  transcendental  as  it  looks  when 
written  down:  good  comfortable  people  and 
unreflecting,  perhaps  over-valuing  their  pos- 
sessions, yet  holding  to  the  right  by  instinct, 

33  fife  for 


for  whom  the  sun  would  lose  its  light,  and 
life  lose  all  its  value  if  they  were  forced  into 
cruelty  or  dishonour  in  order  to  keep  their 
hold  of  those  possessions.  In  such  a  case  as 
that,  a  dining-room  table  may  be  the  pleasant 
projection  of  a  man's  sunny  goodwill  towards 
his  kind.  In  another  and  a  worse  case  you 
may  have  the  same  class  of  table,  qua  legs  and 
finish,  and  yet  no  better  thing  than  an  altar  to 
a  belly  god. 

fife  It  is  the  spirit  that  animates  the  table  that 
really  counts. 

*fe  It  is  the  animating  spirit  that  counts  every- 
where. One  of  the  things  that  have  most 
staggered  reflecting  people,  from  David  on- 
ward, is  the  apparent  success  of  the  unright- 
eous. The  lovers  of  the  concrete,  the  wor- 
shippers of  the  material  for  its  own  sake, 
the  masters  and  mistresses  of  the  art  of  grab, 
how  they  get  on ! 

fife  Well,  let  them!  Why  should  you,  oh 
good  man !  oh  good  woman !  covet  their  fester- 
ing rubbish  heaps?  Do  you  know  the  venom 
generated  by  a  great  pile  of  ill-gotten  fer- 
menting money?  Moreover  before  you  com- 
plain of  the  success  of  the  unrighteous,  you 
have  to  be  quite  sure  that  your  man  is  what 
34 


you  take  him  for.  He  may  have  a  quite 
beautiful  vein  of  virtue  in  him  that  sweetens 
the  whole  lump.  For  instance,  I  have  seen 
the  worshipper  of  the  material  for  its  own 
sake  succeed  and  flourish;  but  when  I  have 
looked  carefully  into  his  case,  I  have  found 
that  he  has  been  an  idealist  somewhere:  per- 
haps a  devoted  husband  and  father ;  and  with 
a  motive  that  has  seemed  pure  to  himself  he 
has  wrung  the  hearts  of  others.  His  dealings 
with  matter,  which  for  the  sake  of  the  crea- 
tures beloved  by  him  he  has  learned  to  control, 
have  been  masterly.  Perhaps  his  sole  fault 
has  been  that  he  has  worn  a  pair  of  moral 
blinkers,  that  he  has  made  the  mistake  of  con- 
founding spirit  and  matter  (one  often  made 
by  political  economists  who  should  be  wise) 
and  has  taken  and  pounded  the  hearts  and  the 
souls  and  the  lives  of  his  brothers  and  sisters 
in  his  mortar  along  with  the  rest! 
fifc  And  in  any  case,  why  should  you,  oh 
brother,  oh  sister,  with  your  hands  full  of 
lilies  and  roses,  honey  on  your  tongue,  and  the 
far  music  of  a  dream  in  your  ears,  vex  your 
souls  because  of  a  cock  crowing  on  a  dunghill? 


XIII.  THE  BEAUTIFUL  WAY 

jflfc  QUITE  poor  and  apparently  unimportant 
people  sometimes  have  a  large  influence.  In 
small  ways  they  are  great.  The  large  spirit 
grown  powerful  through  exercise  may  be  able 
to  deal  freely  with  life  and  with  matter,  and 
bring  about  great  results: — most  of  us  have 
to  be  content  with  small  things.  But  even  in 
the  doing  of  the  smallest  thing  there  lurks  a 
wonderful  efficacy  and  sweetness,  if  only  it  be 
done  in  a  Beautiful  Way.  I  have  met  people 
who  never  talked  about  an  ideal,  and  who 
would  be  frightened  at  the  notion  of  enter- 
taining one,  who  yet  had  a  beautiful  way  of 
doing  things. 

%  Simple  things  done  beautifully  have  the 
gift  of  becoming  translucent.  They  acquire  a 
large  significance. 

*%  You  can  light  a  fire  and  tend  a  hearth  in 
such  a  way  that  it  becomes  a  symbol  of  all  the 
lighted  hearts  in  the  world. 
%  You  can  place  food  on  a  table  in  such  a 
way  that  those  whom  you  serve  are  thrice  fed. 
<%  You  can  put  clothes  on  as  cleanly  and  as 
fairly  as  the  rose  clothes  itself  in  June. 
%  I  have  seen  a  woman  bid  good  day  to  a 
shop-assistant  in  such  a  way  as  to  spill  a  radi- 
36 


ance  on  the  counter,  and  bring  depths  of  sweet- 
ness and  hills  of  peace  before  the  worker's 
eyes.  Why  there  is  even  a  way  of  rebuking 
that  generates  love. 

%  There  are  creatures  so  endeared  of  heaven 
that  all  they  do  is  lovely  and  smacks  of  the 
country  of  their  dreams.  Not  all  of  us  are 
dear  to  heaven,  and  our  self-conscious  efforts 
after  the  Beautiful  Way  may  be  ludicrous  to 
other  folk;  but  if  we  persist  in  our  efforts 
something  will  pierce  through  our  clumsiness. 
^s  The  light  that  shines  at  the  wick  of  a  tallow 
candle  is  made  of  fire  and  related  to  the  light 
of  sacred  lamps. 

%  Even  if  you  have  to  cook  pies  or  sit  on  a 
high  stool  doing  accounts  you  can  do  it  in  an 
extraordinary  way.  A  sort  of  flavour  will 
hang  about  you  and  your  pies  and  your 
accounts.  At  odd  moments  those  who  come 
in  contact  with  you  will  have  glimpses  of 
those  deep  seas  of  light  where  your  daily  ablu- 
tions are  performed. 

XIV.  ON  THE  FORMING  OF 
IDEALS 

^fe  ONE  might  almost  say  that  there  are  as 

many  different  kinds  of  idealists  as  there  are 

37  Sfe  people 


people; — that  there  are  as  many  ideals  as 
there  are  souls. 

fifc  What  is  the  ideal  of  life  for  you  and  me? 
*fc  There  is  not  one  common  to  us  both ;  there 
are  a  few  broad  points  on  which  we  can  meet, 
but  my  set  of  working  ideals  would  hardly 
do  for  you,  nor  yours  for  me.  Yours  might 
be  too  complicated  for  me,  mine  too  unprac- 
tical for  you.  The  essence  of  this  thing  we 
call  the  ideal  is  that  it  should  be  a  pictured 
image  or  a  series  of  pictured  images  of  life;  a 
sort  of  triple  extract  of  human  conclusions 
concerning  the  forms  and  appearances  of 
things,  boiled  down  and  reduced  to  theory. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  all  of  us  harbour  an  end- 
less series  of  working  ideals  relating  to  things 
within  and  without  the  mind;  for  instance  I 
have  my  own  notion  of  a  perfectly  darned 
sock;  of  what  blackberry  jam  should  be;  and 
what,  a  sequence  of  ideas.  You  too  have  a 
storehouse  of  such  samples  of  perfection  which 
you  are  eternally  turning  over  and  taking  out 
for  use. 

%  When  we  say  that  so  and  so  has  a  high 
ideal  we  mean  a  most  complicated  and  diffi- 
cult thing;  we  mean  that  he  is  in  possession 
of  a  whole  gallery  of  beautiful  patterns  of 

38 


thought,  language,  manners  and  achievement 
of  all  sorts. 

%  The  value  of  such  a  gallery  of  ideals  de- 
pends a  good  deal  on  the  power  and  lucidity 
of  the  mind  that  has  collected  them. 
*fe  Some  people  are  without  sufficient  think- 
ing power  to  evolve  an  ideal  for  themselves; 
as  a  rule  they  accept  the  ideals  of  the  thinkers 
who  have  preceded  them,  under  the  name  of 
religion.  A  good  thing  that  they  do.  Who 
wants  the  conclusions  of  a  fool  upon  folly? 
The  ready-made  code  is  safe  and  sure.  The 
fresh  waters  of  spring  may  well  run  in  the 
noble  old  courses. 

^fe  But  if  we  are  to  be  of  real  value  we  must 
reflect: — reflect  with  passion  and  with  truth; 
nothing  is  to  be  accepted ;  everything  is  to  be 
examined;  so  fast  do  new  forms  of  life  evolve 
that  last  year's  virtue  must  appear  in  a  differ- 
ent trim  to-day  and  take  another  weapon  in 
her  hand.  The  love  of  the  supreme  good  and 
of  our  fellow  men  may  yet  drive  us  on  to 
strange  thoughts  and  deeds,  unthinkable  and 
undoable  in  the  long  ago. 
*fe  We  have  said  that  the  idealist  stands  with 
his  dream  above  him  and  his  feet  in  the  mud. 
Between  the  two  are  the  hands  that  must  bring 
39  flfcihe 


the  intractable  clay  into  some  likeness  of  the 
heaven  he  has  conceived.  As  time  goes  on 
and  his  labours  go  on,  the  clay  takes  un- 
expected shapes  about  him,  some  beautiful, 
some  ugly  and  mean.  His  dream  too  alters 
with  the  years.  He  wants  now  to  remedy 
some  of  his  mistakes;  he  wants  to  embody 
some  of  the  new  features  of  his  dream.  He 
himself  alters  with  the  years.  So  it  is  that  our 
ideals  must  be  elastic,  we  must  be  ever  ready 
to  deal  with  fresh  circumstances.  The  old 
ways  may  be  better  than  the  new  ways ;  but  the 
new  ways  may  have  some  seed  of  betterment, 
of  progression  in  them  that  the  old  ways 
lacked.  To  be  rigid  is  generally  to  be  wrong. 
We  may  want  new  laws  to  fit  a  whole  nation 
full  of  a  new  sort  of  people. 
9k  We  shall  never  be  right  till  we  have  re- 
considered our  ideals. 

%  We  shall  never  get  right  till  we  have 
ceased  to  believe  in  the  Victorian  clever  man's 
principle  that  men  might  be  used  as  machines. 
<%  We  shall  never  get  right  till  the  human 
babe  becomes  for  us  sacro-sanct; — whether  its 
father  be  saint  or  sinner,  whether  he  choose  to 
forsake  it  or  no. 

flfc  We  shall  never  get  right  till  natural  law, 
40 


and  not  the  male,  is  left  to  determine  the 
relative  functions  of  man  and  woman. 
*fe  We  shall  never  get  right  till  we  have 
formed  a  national  ideal  of  responsibility  to 
the  earth's  surface  beginning  with  such  trifles 
as  ginger-beer  bottles  and  paper-bags  and  end- 
ing up  with  battle-fields,  railway  companies 
and  slums. 

^fe  We  shall  never  get  right  till  we  have  a 
new  Doomsday  Book  of  the  towns  of  the 
country  written  out  fairly  for  all  men  to  read. 
flfe  We  shall  never  get  right  till  we  have  a  new 
international  ideal.  The  world  has  had 
enough  of  the  morals  of  the  public-school  boy 
in  the  diplomatist's  coat.  The  day  when  the 
"cannon's  flesh"  rises  up  and  refuses  its  destiny 
will  be  a  great  day  in  the  history  of  mankind. 
•%  Meantime  we  had  all  better  cultivate  elas- 
ticity of  mind,  which  includes  tolerance,  with- 
out which  our  ideals  may  become  mere  rods 
to  whip  each  other's  backs. 

XV.  MATERIAL  OF  THE  IDEALIST 

"fc  ALL  that  is  of  real  value  to  a  life  proceeds 
from  within  outwards.  No  beauty,  riches, 
honours,  are  of  real  import  to  any  unless 
the  soul  within  is  beautiful;  rich  and  honour- 
41  %  able 


able  enough  to  enter  into  correspondence  with 
its  opportunities.  You  cannot  give  any  living 
creature  that  which  has  no  relation  to  himself. 
You  cannot  give  a  burglar  the  Divina  Corn- 
media.  You  cannot  give  the  National  Gal- 
lery to  a  procuress.  You  cannot  give  a  sunrise 
to  a  cardsharper.  You  cannot  give  human 
souls  in  charge  to  a  person  who  hasn't  got  one. 
*fe  You  cannot  give  cities  in  charge  to  men  of 
no  wider  view  than  the  mole  who  only  sees 
his  own  little  underground  path. 
<%  When  the  devil  wanted  to  show  Christ  the 
kingdoms  of  the  world,  he  took  him  up  to  the 
top  of  a  high  mountain.  Let  any  one  who 
wishes  to  see  what  the  kingdoms  of  the  world 
look  like  to-day,  climb  to  the  highest  acces- 
sible point  in  the  heart  of  a  great  city. 
Sfc  Get  up  to  the  top  of  St.  Paul's  and  behold 
London.  Look  over  that  vast  heaving  sea; 
before  you  have  looked  long  you  will  be  ready 
to  confess  the  powerlessness  of  man  to  control 
the  destinies  of  men. 

Sfe  There  it  lies,  a  living  ocean : — house  roofs 
peaked  like  ranks  of  ocean  waves.  What 
man's  eye  or  hand  wrought  these  things  or 
brought  these  masses  together?  It  was  no 
man  at  all.  The  strongest  of  us  and  the  most 
42 


intentionate  are  but  livelier  instruments  of  far 
travelling  forces,  whose  beginning  and  whose 
ending  no  one  knows. 

^fe  On  such  an  eminence  as  this  all  rancours 
drop  away:  what  large  matters  are  these  men's 
pigmy  foulness,  those  men's  pigmy  tyrannies 
and  hates?  We  are  in  the  presence  of  vital 
impulses  which  have  whirled  men  into  a 
centre  as  the  streaming  nebulae  are  whirled. 
Such  a  spectacle  as  this  is  one  of  those  evolu- 
tions which  are  as  independent  of  the  will  as 
the  massed  movements  of  birds,  the  westward 
and  eastward  movement  of  crowded  hu- 
manity, the  crusades,  the  necessity  that  covers 
the  sea  with  ships  and  sends  men  crawling  to 
the  fop  of  high  mountains  and  the  poles. 
<%  The  vastness  of  the  thing  amazes:  what 
does  it  portend?  Look  at  that  heaving  and 
distracted  sea;  think  of  the  million  children's 
lives  there,  stunted  and  granite-bound.  In 
God's  name,  what  pattern  of  life  can  we  fit  to 
these  people's  needs? 

*fc  Look  deep  enough,  and  perhaps  it  will 
appear  that  here  in  the  midst  of  terrors  is 
the  very  point  of  salvation.  Here  has  been 
formed,  independent  of  any  human  will,  the 
monster  crucible  in  which  the  human  race  is 
43  flfcto 


to  be  fused  and  refined.  The  vast  cauldron 
whirls  and  seethes  and  threatens  eruption; 
countless  fresh  units  of  life  are  attracted  to 
it  and  caught  in,  there  to  be  fused  with  the 
rest. 

*fc  And  the  movement  is  not  all  centripetal. 
Already  we  see  the  centrifugal  tendency 
counteracting.  Having  learned  what  the 
city  has  to  give,  another  and  quite  new  race 
of  creatures  is  flung  off  on  the  land.  It  is  not 
all  bad,  this  huge  melting-pot  of  mankind. 
There  is  no  need  to  despair.  "Don't  look  at 
it  from  the  top  downward,"  said  the  poet  son 
of  a  drunken  carpenter  to  me  the  other  day. 
"Look  at  it  from  below  upward,  if  you  want 
to  see  the  light.  It  becomes  glorious  then." 
Glorious  it  might  be  to  him  because  his  genius 
had  set  him  free:  it  is  often  not  very  glorious 
to  the  others.  Yet  there  was  truth  in  what  he 
said.  There  is  life  in  that  mass.  There  is  a 
heaving  in  the  lower  depths  that  betokens  life. 
Imponderable  shapes  and  essences  float  above 
it,  the  thoughts  and  ideals  of  men,  changing 
always,  unrealised  as  yet. 
"%  Moreover  the  women,  for  so  long  sub- 
merged and  silenced,  are  beginning  to  rise; 
some  strong  impulsion  drives  them  on;  they 
44 


are  taught  by  hard  lessoning  that  on  them  de- 
pends the  race,  that  in  freedom  with  good 
counsel  there  is  health  and  life;  that  the  sons 
of  slaves  share  in  the  mother's  abasement;  that 
the  soul,  the  light-giver  and  leader  of  the 
body,  faints  and  corrupts  when  exposed  to 
ignominy. 

*fc  Hope  is  moving  the  people;  now  what 
ideal  to  set  before  them  to  help  them  to  their 
hope?  Here  is  the  raw  material  of  life;  raw 
indeed.  There  yonder  is  the  excellent  pattern 
of  the  dream.  How  can  the  will  and  the  two 
hands  of  the  idealist  so  work  upon  this  mass 
as  to  bring  the  two  into  some  semblance  of 
each  other? 

*fc  But  the  idealists  are  at  it  already,  a  thou- 
sand of  them!  The  miracle  will  accomplish 
itself;  they,  we,  can  no  more  help  going  for- 
ward than  the  stream  can  help  running  to  the 
sea.  Let  us  only  discern  which  way  the  uni- 
versal current  sets,  so  that  we  may  save  our- 
selves the  trouble  of  swimming  up-hill.  Go 
forward  we  must:  and  where  is  the  sense  of 
doing  it  backwards? 

<%  Those  men  who,  gripping  their  property,, 

oppose  the  advance  of  social  science;  those 

men  who  oppose  the  advance  of  women,  re- 

45  <8fc  mind 


mind  me  of  nothing  so  much  as  of  a  he-goat 
that  butts  at  the  edges  of  a  travelling  bog. 
^s  No;  let  us  sail  with  the  blessed  wind  and 
not  against  it.  Give  liberty  and  give  bread 
to  soul  and  body.  Let  us  be  rid  of  the  illusion 
of  purely  male  energy  that  is  without  pity, 
without  wisdom,  and  without  love. 
<%  For  heaven's  sake,  let  us  teach  the  children 
to  be  good.  We  shall  bring  all  the  nation 
into  contempt,  if  we  do  not.  You  cannot 
build  up  a  respectable  State  on  a  foundation  of 
rotten  units. 

$fc  Some  day  we  shall  come  to  try  the  spirit 
as  a  weapon.  We  have  never  tried  it  yet. 
When  we  do  we  shall  find  it  to  be  the  true 
earth  shaker,  stronger  and  more  persuasive 
than  the  cannon  or  the  sword. 
*fc  The  walls  of  Jericho  fell  down  at  the  sound 
of  a  trumpet;  so  might  the  old  walls  of  pride 
and  stupidity  fall  down  round  the  City  of 
Souls  and  the  flood  come  in. 
*fc  Did  the  wind  of  the  spirit,  blowing 
strongly  from  the  right  quarter  but  gain  an 
entrance,  we  should  all  become  intelligent 
enough  to  believe  in  the  power  of  simple  good- 
ness;— simple  private  goodness  which  is  the 
only  thing  for  all  of  us  from  the  Lord  Cham- 


berlain  down  to  the  knife  and  boot  boy.  Not 
a  comfortable  soul  among  us  but  would  be 
willing  to  lay  down  his  meal  too  many  and 
his  superfluous  bits  of  shining  metal  and  stone 
in  order  to  bring  light  to  the  myriad  eyes  of 
the  disinherited  children  who  should  be  our 
care. 

<%  Not  a  lazy  soul  among  us  but  would  leave 
his  selfish  muddling  to  help  in  the  labour  of 
regeneration,  a  work  for  angels  and  for  gods, 
incomparably  difficult,  incomparably  great 

XVI.  THE  REWARDS  OF  THE 
IDEAL 

^s  I  HAVE  not  lived  long  enough  to  watch 
the  generations.  I  can  only  record  here  the 
result  of  say  twenty  intelligent  years  of  obser- 
vation;— not  long  enough  to  entitle  one  to 
speak  with  authority.  Still,  twenty  years 
make  a  long  enough  space  in  which  to  come  to 
a  conclusion.  The  conclusion  I  have  come  to 
is  that  the  rewards  of  the  ideal  are  constant 
and  valuable.  At  one  time  I  did  not  think 
it  was  so.  I  was  forced  during  some  years  to 
conclude  that  cunning  was  the  most  valuable, 
the  most  frequently  and  richly  rewarded  of  all 
qualities, — the  cunning  that  is  the  grand  tool 
47  *&  of 


of  the  appetites ;  the  cunning  that  knows  how 
to  handle  men  and  women  and  facts,  with  an 
unsleeping  eye  to  its  own  advantage. 
Sfe  Later  on  when  I  found  Cunning  sitting 
among  his  gathered  sheaves  I  was  not  particu- 
larly enticed  by  the  quality  of  the  harvest,  nor 
by  the  flavours  that  pervaded  the  harvest  field. 
*fe  On  the  other  hand  when  I  became  intelli- 
gent enough  myself  to  watch  the  pilgrimage 
of  a  soul  living  for  ideal  ends  through  all  the 
intricacies  of  shows  and  appearances  that 
make  up  our  life,  I  became  gradually  more 
impressed.  I  had  seen  a  good  many  things:  I 
had  seen  a  dull  soul  gradually  extinguishing 
the  beauty  of  a  noble  face  and  form;  form  and 
face  growing  more  opaque  and  heavy  year  by 
year.  I  had  seen  a  coarse  soul,  born  to  every 
shape  and  appearance  of  material  beauty,  sur- 
rounded from  birth  with  all  the  shows  and 
forms  that  are  for  delight, — I  had  seen  that 
soul  make  a  hell  for  itself  and  others  out  of  a 
Paradise  of  the  senses. 

<%  Now  I  saw  a  pure  soul  growing  strong, 
and  conquering  untoward  and  difficult  sur- 
roundings precisely  as  a  man  by  labour  con- 
quers a  harsh  unfruitful  soil.  I  have  watched 
that  soul  interpenetrate  others,  while  weaving 


about  itself  continually  widening  circles  of 
colour  and  light. 

*fc  Lastly  I  saw  a  fine  spirit  literally  draw 
afresh  the  lines  of  a  plain  uninteresting 
countenance. 

*fe  Have  I  seen,  or  do  I  delude  myself  in 
thinking  I  have  seen  the  child  born  of  the 
heavenly  mind  fairer  than  its  parents  in  body 
because  of  their  power  of  thought? 
Sfc  Can  fine  minds  improve  a  breed  or  race? 
Be  sure  they  can. 

%  Other  rewards  the  pursuit  of  the  Ideal 
brings  with  it;  for  one  thing  it  leaves  the 
seekers  no  time  to  be  lazy  minded;  the  con- 
stant falling  short,  the  humiliation,  the  lapses, 
the  repentance  that  follows  these  lapses;  the 
ceaseless  effort  to  discriminate  between  values 
and  appearances;  all  this  preserves  in  the 
mind  the  agility  and  suppleness  of  youth. 
Mere  good-nature  or  even  goodness  will  not 
save  the  soul  alive  in  middle  and  old  age. 
There  is  something  mental  and  spiritual  that 
has  an  exact  parallel  in  stoutness  of  body;  it 
might  be  described  as  a  sort  of  comfortable 
fuzziness:  it  ends  by  smothering  the  soul  in 
excellent  good  people  sometimes.  From  this 
disease  the  seekers  of  the  ideal  are  saved ;  their 
49  %  search 


search  keeps  them  lively.  It  sharpens  their 
faculties. 

Sfc  They  are  like  gold-seekers,  ransacking 
every  soil  for  the  one  pure  grain.  They  gain 
in  the  end  great  skill  in  discerning  the  nature 
of  the  different  soils  and  rock-veins,  in  divin- 
ing where  this  gold  streak  is  to  be  found. 
/You  can  tell  idealists  by  their  skill  in  the 
objective.  To  the  common  mind,  what  is 
called  a  hard  fact  is  something  solid,  opaque, 
and  final.  The  common  mind  has  the  clever- 
ness of  the  jackdaw  in  collecting  these  solid 
objects  about  it. 

*fc  A  "thing"  has  the  same  value  as  a  fact,  or 
even  more ;  there  it  is ;  see  round  it  if  you  dare ; 
that  red  brick  house;  that  motor-car;  is  not 
that  convincing?  See  that  large  lump  of 
gold?  Why  will  you  not  bob  and  curtsey  to 
it? 

%  But  your  idealists  will  not  bob  until  they 
have  reflected;  they  want  to  penetrate  these 
facts,  these  objects ;  of  what  stream  of  thought, 
motive,  and  desire  are  they  the  deposit? 
Whence  came  they?  How  came  they? 
Whither  are  they  tending?  As  we  divine  the 
passage  of  the  grinding  glacier  from  the  rock- 
heaps  it  leaves  behind,  so  do  they  divine  the 
50 


courses  of  the  will  by  the  accretion  of  the  solid 
objects  about  it.  You  think  to  impress  the 
eye  of  the  ideal  thinker  by  a  gold  chain  or  a 
chin  or  a  wrist  held  high?  He  will,  if  his  at- 
tention happens  to  be  attracted,  at  once  begin 
to  reflect  on  your  symptoms;  to  analyse  the 
conclusions  of  the  mind  that  have  gone  to  de- 
termine the  angle  at  which  your  chin  or  your 
wrist  is  held;  your  gold  chain  will  be  like  a 
little  scroll  of  fine  writing  and  read  at  a 
glance. 

*fc  For  your  true  idealist,  well  trained  in  the 
sternest  of  all  schools,  has  a  mind  agile  beyond 
description.  How  long  do  you  think  it  would 
take  an  Emerson  to  analyse  a  Rockefeller? 
Half  a  look,  half  a  word,  the  recognition  of 
an  atmosphere;  and  the  story  is  told. 
*fc  I  am  talking  of  course  of  the  great  ones, 
the  masters  and  mistresses  who  have  been  long 
on  the  road  and  know  every  yard  of  it  and  all 
the  signs  of  the  weather.  To  us,  who  never 
can  hope  for  such  wisdom  as  theirs,  is  left  the 
continual  attempting  and  the  humiliation  that 
comes  of  repeated  small  failures.  The  great 
thinkers  have  their  moments  of  despair;  the 
small  ones  have  no  temptation  to  be  anything 
but  humble. 

51  . 


fifc  One  cannot  even  say,  "Follow  your  dream 
and  you  will  be  happy."  You  may  be  happy, 
you  probably  will;  but  you  may  not;  and  in 
any  case  that  is  not  quite  what  you  are  after, 
though  it  generally  includes  it.  Circum- 
stances may  be  too  many  for  you.  But  what 
one  can  say  is,  Follow  your  dream  and  you 
will  not  be  sleepy.  You  will  not  be  old.  You 
will  keep  a  young  heart  and  you  will  always 
have  plenty  to  do.  Your  mind  will  be  agile 
and  increasingly  agile,  your  life  fuller  and 
more  worth  living  every  day. 
<%  These  are  only  a  few  of  the  rewards  of  the 
ideal;  they  are  really  so  numerous  and  ex- 
traordinary that  one  might  be  all  day  telling 
them;  the  harvest  is  so  rich  that  one  hardly 
knows  where  to  begin  the  tale.  Perhaps  one 
of  the  greatest  rewards  is  the  increasing  value 
and  meaning  that  one  finds  in  simple  things. 
The  assayer  of  gold  will  find  that  they  stand 
the  test.  The  reason  seems  to  me  to  be  that 
there  is  a  perfection  in  simplicity  that  is  only 
beaten  by  the  very  topmost  perfection  in  art 
and  scarcely  even  then.  You  can  have  perfect 
bread  and  cheese  for  instance.  A  perfect 
French  dinner  can  only  be  had  by  very  few. 
Take  a  boiled  egg  for  another  example  or  a 


whitewashed  wall;  a  fine  morning;  a  rose- 
bush or  even  a  row  of  peas;  for  women  the 
pleasure  of  baking  a  loaf  or  making  a  garment 
or  bathing  a  child.  For  men  and  women  the 
pleasure  of  making  or  doing  anything  really 
well.  There  are  large  meanings  in  these 
simple  things ;  the  idealist  sees  them,  and  reads 
them  in,  always  more  and  more ;  only  the  male 
and  female  fool  deride  them. 
%  It  follows  that  as  the  simple  things  of  life 
grow  in  beauty  and  value,  so  does  life  itself 
increase  in  beauty  and  significance.  This 
gain  the  idealist  will  find  he  shares  with  the 
scientist.  Everything  is  interesting  to  the 
scientist  certainly,  but  there  are  degrees  of 
interest:  a  yard  of  Hedgerow  interests  him 
more  than  the  drawing-room  carpet;  a  patch 
of  the  night  sky  more  than  the  constellations 
of  the  shop-window.  Our  pilgrim  on  his  or 
her  pilgrimage  will  find  just  the  same  sifting 
of  estimates  going  on  in  his  mind;  values  will 
change  places;  the  true  things,  the  eternal 
things  will  come  to  the  top;  the  temporary 
things  go  down.  Not  that  we  must  under- 
value the  drawing-room  carpet  and  the  shop 
windows.  Unless  the  one  is  elevated  into  a 
fetich  and  the  other  into  a  stage  upon  which 
53  .  %  Folly 


Folly  screams  at  her  top  note,  they  are  a  nat- 
ural and  interesting  part  of  life.  But  the 
pure-hearted  woman  will  not  be  intoxicated 
by  them  as  the  female  materialists  are.  Nor 
can  the  male  materialist  plume  himself  on 
any  superiority ;  his  follies  may  be  less  gaudy, 
they  may  be  more  impure  and  as  trivial  in 
their  way. 

Sfe  Our  pilgrim  finds  himself  more  and  more 
in  love  with  the  simplicities ;  his  wallet  grows 
fuller,  but  his  step  is  lighter,  his  eye  keener 
as  it  glances  abroad.  Moreover  he  is  getting 
forward  on  his  journey.  This  is  another  of 
his  rewards.  There  is  nothing  static  in  the 
spiritual  quest.  There  is  a  delicious  sense  of 
moving  onward.  There  are  continual  fresh 
horizons  appearing.  Every  point  that  is 
passed  is  like  a  new  stage  upon  the  road. 
%  There  is  no  delight  comparable  to  that  of 
the  spiritual  life ;  when  I  speak  of  our  pilgrim 
being  in  love  with  the  simplicities,  I  do  not 
mean  that  he  will  always  be  hoeing  round  a 
rose-bush  with  his  eyes  turned  up  to  the  stars, 
on  a  diet  of  boiled  eggs.  What  I  do  mean 
is  that  from  the  simple  things  of  life  to  the 
great  things  is  but  an  easy  step.  It  is  a  much 
longer  and  more  toilsome  step  from  the  in- 
54 


tricacies  of  a  sophisticated  life  to  simple  great- 
ness. Cleverness  is  death  to  greatness.  The 
business  point  of  view,  so  called,  has  been  the 
winding-sheet  of  many  a  fine  mind.  Your 
true  quester,  who  sees  straight  in  simple 
things,  will  see  straight  on  a  steep  and  crooked 
path  that  will  catch  the  clever  man  in  a  fall. 
And  it  is  not  only  in  straightness  and  pureness 
that  your  spiritual  man  gains;  power  and 
agility  of  mind  come  to  him  also;  and  on  a 
higher  plane  than  they  come  to  his  clever 
friend. 

fife  One  of  his  most  delightful  rewards  is  the 
good  company  in  which  he  finds  himself.  He 
is  one  of  a  confraternity.  All  the  poets  are 
his  brethren,  so  are  the  great  painters  and  the 
great  musicians.  So  are  the  saints,  the  think- 
ers of  all  countries  and  of  all  religions:  their 
wisdom  is  his,  their  spiritual  consolation  is 
his. 

fife  Friendships  are  worth  just  so  much  as  the 
stuff  they  feed  upon.  Do  you  drink  with  your 
friend?  Then  your  friendship  is  worth  as 
much  and  no  more  than  the  liquor  in  the  glass. 
Do  you  hunt  with  your  friend?  Your  friend- 
ship is  worth  just  so  much  as  a  shout  across  the 
hill.  Do  you  talk  with  your  friend?  Of 
55  fife  what 


what  do  you  talk?  Of  just  that  stuff  is  your 
love  or  friendship  made.  It  may  be  worth 
no  more  than  a  sensual  jest:  it  may  be  as  broad 
as  the  seas,  as  high  as  the  heavens.  Let  the 
young  lovers  know  that  the  ideal  is  the  only 
safe  bond.  In  the  difficult  night  the  youth 
knows  his  beloved  by  the  light  she  carries  and 
she  him. 

*%  See  now  where  our  pilgrim  of  the  soul 
comes  in  and  pulls  off  the  prize!  Of  what 
immortal  stuff  are  his  loves  and  his  friend- 
ships made!  Instead  of  forming  one  otf  a 
jostling  crowd,  hungry,  selfish,  unheeding,  he 
climbs  a  golden  ladder  on  whose  steps  he 
meets  with  the  angels.  Along  that  rising  path 
lie,  like  summer  fragrance,  the  consolations 
especially  needed  by  sensitive  souls  in  these 
stormy  days  when  the  robust  progeny  of  old, 
dead  sins  are  becoming  so  formidable.  The 
idealist  finds  in  his  creed  a  continual  encour- 
agement to  keep  going  on.  He  sees,  even  in 
events  that  are  untoward  and  cruel  a  principle 
of  progression.  Above  the  slums  of  Wapping 
and  the  acres  of  chimney-tops  he  can  see  the 
apple-trees  of  the  Isles  of  the  Blest,  the  spires 
of  a  new  city  of  the  children  of  men.  He  can 
even  foretell  the  new  state  whose  conditioning 

56 


is  in  accord  with  the  creative  rhythms  of  the 
universe. 

*fc  As  for  himself,  he  has  no  fear  and  no  un- 
easiness. A  crust  is  good  enough  for  him.  A 
whitewashed  room  is  a  paradise.  His  com- 
panions are  the  glorious  company  of  the 
apostles.  Even  death  and  the  judgment  are 
his  old  friends.  Nay,  death  may  appear  to 
him  as  a  veiled  lover,  into  whose  arms  he  runs ! 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


